"The United Industrial Corporation, a Russian manufacturer, said this week that the world’s first floating nuclear power plant will go into operation on Russia’s eastern coast by the end of 2012.

The manufacturer, known also as O.P.K., told Green Inc. that the first model would be used to help power Viluchinsk, a city on the Kamchatka peninsula that serves as an atomic submarine base.

O.P.K. said similar models could power other cities in northern Russia in the future. But according to nuclear experts, mining companies are likely to use Russian-built floating reactors to power operations to extract oil and gas and valuable minerals from the Arctic and other remote regions. "James Kanter reports for the New York Times July 9, 2009.[2]